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The Eagles travel to Wild Rose at 7 p.m. Friday for a regional semifinal. The Central Wisconsin Conference-10 rivals split during the regular season, with each team winning on the other team's home court.

"My dad (Spence Bunders) always talked to me when I was young about distributing and sharing the ball," Austin said. "Everybody knows I do that, so the coaches tell me don't be afraid to take some shots.

"I got hot in the second quarter and my teammates got me the ball and I knocked some shots down. "The coaches had us prepared perfectly (for their zone)."

Austin inflicted a large portion of his damage in the second quarter with 11 points — all coming after Tri-County opened the period with a 6-0 spurt to close within 17-11.

Many of the problems the Penguins faced throughout the game were self-inflicted — namely turnovers.

The final tally, according to Feldman, was 19 of them, and the strange part is very few came against the full-court pressure A-B was applying. Instead, Tri-County struggled mightily in its half-court set against the Eagles' 1-3-1 and 2-3 zones.

Some of that was due to the length A-B can put on the court, but a vast majority of the turnovers were due to being careless with the ball.

"All we talked about at halftime was how we were not valuing the ball," Feldman said. "The turnovers are what separated them from us. Sloppy ball-handling put us in a hole and we're not a great come from behind team.

"It's the old story when you play a team two times (in the regular season) and keep doing the same things, you're the fool," Feldman added. "We had a couple different ideas and some of them worked."

One of those ideas was getting Dayton Jones, who scored 10 points, to take the ball to the basket hard to either score or draw fouls.

Another concept involved spreading the floor and creating space in the paint. That helped the Penguins stay in the game until early in the second quarter.

Everything feel apart for Tri-County as the Eagles turned up the pressure on defense, resulting in a decisive 17-0 run that put them up 37-13 just before halftime.

"We shot 65 percent on two-point shots and you would think we would be right there," Feldman said. "They're a good team and are going to be a handful (in the tournament). They won't go down without a fight."

Tri-County's coach might be right if Austin Bunders can continue shooting like he did Tuesday. He went 9 for 17 from the field, including 5 of 7 from 3-point range.

Seeing the ball go through the basket was a welcome sight for the Eagles.

A-B wouldn't mind seeing another shooting performance like that against Wild Rose.

"These kids are capable of doing some good things," A-B coach Curt Lamb said. "I like how we came out and took care of business tonight like we were supposed to."